UK medical researchers are using grid computing technology to help find a cure for smallpox.

The universities of Oxford and Essex are working with IBM to create a global grid of PCs to help find a drug that will treat victims of the killer virus.

The Smallpox Research Grid Project follows a similar principle to the SETI@home initiative which uses the spare power of millions of home computers to help in the search for extraterrestrial life.

IBM is providing its p690 servers and DB2 database for the central infrastructure, which will link to two million PCs using specialist software from United Devices.

The database will handle 15 million queries a day generated by the computing grid.

The results of the project will be delivered to the US Department of Defense. Although there is a vaccination to prevent smallpox, there is still no known cure.

United Devices' software is already being used in similar Oxford University projects targeting cancer and anthrax research, and IBM is working with Oxford's e-Science Centre to use grids for tackling breast cancer.

Grids are an emerging technology that connect computing power and storage capacity across networks to create a single virtual processing entity.

PC users that wish to participate in the project can download the software at www.grid.org.